Indiana Pacers: 5 reasons to be excited for 2019-20 NBA season
By Fox Doucette
5. The Evolution of Myles Turner
Forget what you saw against Rudy Gobert and the French National Team at the Basketball World Cup. Myles Turner is entering his sixth year in the league and is still just 23 years old.
Turner posted a career-high in rebounds per 36 minutes last season with 9.0, backed it up on the advanced stats chart with a career-high rebounding percentage at 13.9 For a cherry on the sundae , he led the league in block percentage at 8.4, good for 16th all-time since the NBA started keeping blocks as a stat in 1973-74.
He also got snubbed when it was time to choose the NBA All-Defensive teams, a fact made all the more insane by Turner being recognized as the best defender on a team that posted the third-best defensive rating in the league.
If you don’t believe that’s motivated Turner to get even better defensively, your grasp on human nature is suspect at best.
But wait, there’s more!
Turner has also evolved his offensive game, hitting 38.8 percent of his 3-point shots on a career-high 2.6 3-point attempts per game last year. He’s slowly turning into a Brook Lopez-type stretch 5, and we saw what happened when Lopez was able to help space the floor for Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Well, the next reason to be excited isn’t exactly the Greek Freak, but he is European…